God of Luck by Ruthann Lum McCunn Read Free Book Online

and friends forever to live among strangers. Since Moongirl had chosen independent spinsterhood, she’d had no occasion to lament for herself. But she’d wailed on behalf of friends, and as I dragged my feet up the gangplank to the devil-ship, I could hear her chanting:
    “Savages have taken you prisoner.
    Once you . . .”
    At the sound of her voice, a lump formed in my throat that I could neither raise nor swallow: The family knew I’d been kidnapped, and my sister had found me! By lamenting instead of calling my name, however, I understood Moongirl was warning that although she’d come to ransom me, my chances of rescue were as unlikely as those of an unwilling bride. My head became so heavy my chin sank onto my chest; the grime on my sandaled feet blurred with the planking. Stumbling on board, my head fell back. My eyes, slitted against the glare, swept up the masts until their tips vanished in a blaze of copper sky. Devil-foreigners swarmed across the spars, and I guessed from the intensity of their activity, the staccato footfalls on deck, sharply raised voices, shrill whistles, and clank of chains that the ship was about to get underway.
    I scolded myself for not taking a chance and letting myself fall off the gangplank into the sea, swimming like mad until I found Moongirl. Now, hemming me in on both sides were devil-foreigners with gleaming swords threatening to scream across my skin, and I could do nothing except trudge between them.
    When I came to a ladder, I mounted it. At the top, more devil-foreigners armed with muskets guarded the sides, the captives standing in three mute, disconsolate rows. My skin crawled with gooseflesh as I realized the muskets were fitted with bayonets. But I comforted myself with the hope that Moongirl, whom I could no longer hear, had gone to seek my release and, despite her warning, she’d secure my freedom. After all, on the boat this morning, Young Master’s father had won his.
    “Get in line,” snapped a middle-aged Chinese devil in crisp, black-gummed silk.
    This devil had a large black umbrella that shaded him from the brutal sun, yet his skin resembled melting wax. Having no umbrella nor hat, sweat ran down my face, chest, and back in rivers. As I walked across the hot deck, a disturbing rumble boiled up from below; pitch oozed from the planks’ seams, gripping the soles of my sandals.
    “Only ten across! Start a new row. No talking.”
    Obeying, I recognized the pointy ears of a scrawny, bare-chested fellow who’d refused to set foot on the gangplank. He hadn’t been the first. A few had pleaded dizziness from the movement of the junk, and Small Eyes— who’d demonstrated how we should ascend the gangplank—had thrown down ropes from the devil-ship and ordered these captives hoisted aboard as if they were, in truth, pigs.
    This fellow had not begged but hawked gobs of spit at the strongmen, then raged at our captors. Even after he’d been bound by his wrists and ankles and the devils hoisting him had deliberately slammed him so hard against the hull that I’d recoiled from the crack, he hadn’t stopped shouting.
    After he’d disappeared over the side, there’d been a single drawn-out cry, nothing more. And where there’d been some before him who keened or cursed their fate as they walked up the gangplank, those who followed, myself included, had been stone silent.
    Now the pointy-eared resister, shackled at his wrists and ankles to a pair of iron rings bolted into the deck, had his head forcibly bowed. His back, badly shredded, was black with blood and swarms of mosquitoes and flies so sated they could scarcely crawl.
    Clearly the devils had whipped him cruelly. Just as clearly, the devils had placed him in irons where we could see him for the same reason magistrates parade prisoners in heavy cangues: to add public humiliation to the punishment, and to frighten others into obedience.
    What held my gaze, though, were the resister’s fingers doubled over